This is the down & dirty, the position isn’t posted yet and this is
the description our technical team has worked up so far and hasn’t been
through the HR wringer yet. But we want to fill this as
quickly as we can possibly find the right person so hoping this
informal post saves us a week or two while the bureaucracy churns.

The really really short version is we want someone who can help with
cloud ops and planning (OpenStack,
Ceph, etc.) as well as direct random linux
support. Now at CSAIL we do support some
pretty amazing
people, so that
part isn’t all bad.

Once it’s posted the wording may be a bit different but we’ll still
be looking for more or less the same thing. Screening is pretty much
all technical staff so you don’t need to tick off buzz words to get
through a pre screener that doesn’t really understand what you’re
talking about.

If you have question feel free to ask in the comments (or me privately
if you prefer).

If you’re interested keep an eye on on http://careers.mit.edu/ (search for
Department “Comp Sci & Artificial Intelligence Lab” and Employment
Type “Full-Time”). There’s only 6 listings today (without this one)
and none of them are even vaguely similar so should be obvious.

I’m sure I’ll tweet it. Hopefully
I’ll edit this post as well and while it can’t hurt to drop me an
email (jon at csail.mit.edu); I can’t promise it will help either.

So the some what long winded description …

Systems Administrator MIT/CSAIL

Would you like to help provide the computing environment for one of
the premiere Computer Science research labs in the world?

The position is about half service development and server
operations and half customer support (generally as 2nd level to our
existing help desk). Roughly equivalent to a USNIX/LISA Level
III: Intermediate/Advanced System Administrator position.

Required Skills

Strong interpersonal and communication skills; ability to write
purchase justifications, train users in complex topics, make
presentations to an internal audience, and interact positively
with technical and non technical users

Independent problem-solving, self-direction

Comfort with most aspects of operating system administration; for
example, managing processes and services, configuration of mail
systems, system installation and configuration, printer systems,
and fundamentals of security

Familiarity with the principles and practice of system
configuration management using modern declarative tools; ability
to model and reduce complex system requirements as configuration
declarations

A solid understanding of the operating systems in use at the site
(Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD, MacOS, Windows); understanding of
paging and swapping, inter-process communication, devices and
what device drivers do, and filesystem concepts, for this
position Linux variants are most important

Current Technologies

Roles often adapt to the person who fills them here, so we have a
certain expectation that the person we hire will not be doing exactly
the same set of things as the person who leaves. This is not an
absolute set of requirements so much as it is a wish list.

We try to stay at the forefront of emerging technologies. Our
environment is constantly evolving and we value strong fundamental
understanding with a demonstrated ability to learn and adapt over
simply having a rote understanding of our current checklist of
applications and products.

Bonus (things you could optionally dive into)

Hours and Location

CSAIL is located in building 32 (the Stata Center) on MIT’s Cambridge
Massachusetts campus.

As a new hire you will be expected to be on site 9-5. That said
once you’ve come up to speed more flexibility to do remote
work is possible if you need some quieter time to focus on a project
or occasionally to deal with life’s unexpected events (like contractors
or sick kids).

This position is part of an on call rotation. On call duties are
shared between a primary and secondary responder for one week
shifts. Frequency fluctuates somewhat depending on staffing and
vacations, but typically in a six week period you’ll be primary once
and secondary once.you will be on call once a month as either primary
or secondary responder.

This really is a question, so don’t expect any answers from me, though
hopefully I can clarify (part) of the problem.

It’s something I’ve been thinking on for some time and
a tweet by Beth
Cohen (@bfcohen) yesterday really caught my
attention, particularly:

Research shows that men apply for jobs for which they have 60% of the stated qualifications while women demur unless they have 100%.

I’ve fixated on that one point (of many) as I think it would have a
relatively large impact on getting women on a more even footing with
men for a relatively simple change. Like it or not advancement and
large salary changes in this industry are usually due to a job change
not just asking (much less not asking and relying on karma).

As part of my glorious position on the
OpensStack User Committee
(note to self submit bio for user committee page) I recently went
through all 619 free response comments collected by the
user survey in the past 12
months. The point of that exercise was to come up with a very coarse
“Top 10” list to be presented with the tabulated survey results in
Paris.

One of the things that kept coming up (though in the end finished out
of the money so no spoilers here) was making it easier to install
OpenStack. Certainly this is an area though could use improvement,
but how much can it be improved and is it even OpenStack’s business to
worry about installers?

When wearing my ‘user committee’ hat I had to be neutral and try and
interpret the anonymous responses I was looking at as faithfully as
possible without any editorializing. Well I’m takin that hat off now
and putting on my more usual ‘grumpy old bastard’ hat, so hold on kids
it’s going to be a bumpy ride…